Can the atmosphere really warm? Atmospheric gas retention.

[WetEV]

Perhaps you are not aware of the history of science? The consensus view has virtually always been proven incorrect by later scientific discoveries. And those who develop the dissenting views do so by following the facts rather than the crowd.

Our lives depend on many results of consensus science.

"Incorrect" is relative.
The consensus view back in Babylonia was that the Earth was flat. That's not a bad approximation, over scales of the area that you can farm with an ox, or even walk to in a day. Still isn't a bad approximation today, for building a house for example.

The Greeks figured out that was wrong. The Earth is round. They actually even measured the curvature of the Earth, about 0.000126 per mile. That is very close to zero, as long as you are doing things with scales less than a mile.

Of course, we know that the Greeks were wrong as well. Isaac Newton showed otherwise. It is about 1/3 of 1% away from being a true sphere, and is an oblate spheroid.

And he was wrong as well. The North Pole is a few yard higher than the South Pole. There is a very subtle pear shape on top of the oblate spheroid.

Some people live in a world of absolute rights and wrongs. Science works in a world of theories that are incomplete.

Nowadays, of course, we are taught that the flat-earth theory is wrong; that it is all wrong, terribly wrong, absolutely. But it isn't. The curvature of the earth is nearly 0 per mile, so that although the flat-earth theory is wrong, it happens to be nearly right. That's why the theory lasted so long.

http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


One recent "incorrectness" is a fairly subtle change in how humidity is calculated, that seems to be confirmed by both measurements and by far better modeling results for very hot past climates, think alligators in Greenland hot climates. This clearly isn't a place to discuss such a subtle difference in detail, but one side effect of this possible modification in the consensus view of climate science might be that the best estimate of the "Charney sensitivity" center and range will move from about 3C+-1C to about 2.7C+-0.5C of warming. Charney sensitivity is the warming over a century from doubling CO2.

And they are typically scorned and ridiculed mercilessly by the consensus scientists.

"They laughed at Galileo. They laughed at Newton. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown." – Dr Carl Sagan

You can believe that something is black when it is clearly white, but I refuse to accept that view.

I'm saying something is grey. I know that doesn't fit into your black and white view of the world. I can't help that.

 

[Stoaty]

Perhaps you are not aware of the history of science? The consensus view has virtually always been proven incorrect by later scientific discoveries.

Reg, that should make you feel free to:

--smoke as much as you want (consensus view is that smoking causes lung cancer, COPD, etc.)
--not worry about getting AIDS from unprotected sex (consensus view is that HIV causes AIDS)
--avoid vaccinations for children because they cause autism (consensus view is that vaccinations do not cause autism)
--eat as much red meat, saturated fat and cholesterol as you like, since that won't cause atherosclerosis (consensus view is that it does)
--directly inhale the smoke discharged from an older coal plant since mercury isn't a neurotoxin (consensus view is that it is a neurotoxin)

 

[RegGuheert]

Perhaps you are not aware of the history of science? The consensus view has virtually always been proven incorrect by later scientific discoveries.

Reg, that should make you feel free to:

--smoke as much as you want (consensus view is that smoking causes lung cancer, COPD, etc.)
--not worry about getting AIDS from unprotected sex (consensus view is that HIV causes AIDS)
--avoid vaccinations for children because they cause autism (consensus view is that vaccinations do not cause autism)
--eat as much red meat, saturated fat and cholesterol as you like, since that won't cause atherosclerosis (consensus view is that it does)
--directly inhale the smoke discharged from an older coal plant since mercury isn't a neurotoxin (consensus view is that it is a neurotoxin)

Let's repeat it again: climate science is a branch of science which is in an *extremely* primitive state. Many of the critical processes, such as the formation of clouds are NOT fully understood. Other areas are governed by equations for which even the math to solve the equations does not exist. To point to a "consensus" and claim that the science is settled is a ludicrous position to take when even very recent prognostications by the scientists in that area are nowhere near matching the reality that has been measured and shared here for all to see.

No, those here who believe that increasing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere have not brought any data to the table to support their belief system. Instead, they have brought only their beliefs and a whole host of rhetorical devices.

Heck, I haven't heard a single person confirm that there has been NO warming this century, in spite of all the evidence that is staring you in the face. Instead, all I get are claims that I have lied without a single shred of evidence to back up your belief. True science does not deny the data and endeavor to "correct" it. True science endeavors to understand the data and correct our flaws in understanding.

 

[Nubo]

Perhaps you are not aware of the history of science? The consensus view has virtually always been proven incorrect by later scientific discoveries.

Reg, that should make you feel free to:

--smoke as much as you want (consensus view is that smoking causes lung cancer, COPD, etc.)
--not worry about getting AIDS from unprotected sex (consensus view is that HIV causes AIDS)
--avoid vaccinations for children because they cause autism (consensus view is that vaccinations do not cause autism)
--eat as much red meat, saturated fat and cholesterol as you like, since that won't cause atherosclerosis (consensus view is that it does)
--directly inhale the smoke discharged from an older coal plant since mercury isn't a neurotoxin (consensus view is that it is a neurotoxin)

I think you've hit upon a core tenet of the deniers. The main goal seems to be convincing everyone that you can NEVER know ANYTHING with 100 percent certainty. This is why you get the endless epistemological pot-boiling. If we can never be certain we can never take action -- the denialists' mantra.

 

[RegGuheert]

I think you've hit upon a core tenet of the deniers. The main goal seems to be convincing everyone that you can NEVER know ANYTHING with 100 percent certainty. This is why you get the endless epistemological pot-boiling. If we can never be certain we can never take action -- the denialists' mantra.

You seem to not be following well. I have been posting what we know:

- CO2 concentration is rising at an ever-increasing rate
- Global temperature is NOT rising
- U.S. temperature is NOT rising
- Global diurnal temperature range moves in the same direction as global temperature, which implies that the GHE moves in the OPPOSITE direction as global temperature
- Global cyclone frequency, intensity and damage is NOT increasing
- U.S. is now in the largest drought of major hurricane strikes in recorded history
- Tornadoes have not increased in intensity or frequency in a long time
- The proportion of the world in droughts of all levels of severity are gradually dropping
- The world is getting greener
- Food production achieves all-time record highs nearly every year
- Two weeks ago Antarctica had the highest area of sea ice in the satellite instrument record
- Sea ice in the Arctic stopped its decline a few years ago

I have seen one after another poster drop in here and claim "the science is settled" and "disasters are getting worse and worse" and "the temperatures are rising" when these people clearly have not taken a look at the actual data. When I expose their beliefs to the data from the official outlets, there is typically a denial of these basic facts and some ad hominem attacks of those who collected the data without ever showing that the facts are in error. In other words the facts are correct, but their beliefs are in error.

Alone who thinks we should shoot the data instead of correcting the science is doing serious harm to science.

 

[Stoaty]

Heck, I haven't heard a single person confirm that there has been NO warming this century, in spite of all the evidence that is staring you in the face.

Perhaps that is because it is still warming:

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/01/10/1421601/video-charts-planet-is-still-warming/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/10/15/1014151/ten-charts-that-make-clear-the-planet-just-keeps-warming/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

 

[RegGuheert]

I've said this before: You cannot use four-year-old data to show the slope of temperature today. And grouping data by decade gives no information about slope during the decade.

Again, for those who would deny the facts, here are all of the global temperature datasets with their 0-slope trendlines:

You have to take the trendlines back LONGER THAN 9.5 YEARS to see any rise in temperatures in ANY of the datasets. The longest one is over 17.75 years.

For the U.S., here is the data from the U.S. Climate Reference Network, which is the best source we currently have available to know how the climate is affecting the temperature of our country.

You can clearly see no trend in temperatures over the lifetime of that network and also see the two-degree Celsius drop in the past two years.

But we also know the data you are plotting has been changed massively in the recent past. Here is what the twentieth-century temperature data used to look like in 1981:

Note how much warmer 1940 was than 1970. Guess what? Back when many of the high-temperature records were set in the U.S., it was actually hotter!

 

[WetEV]

Heck, I haven't heard a single person confirm that there has been NO warming this century, in spite of all the evidence that is staring you in the face.

No warming, where?

Your back yard? Who cares...

3km high in the atmosphere (MSU temperatures)? Sure, no warming there, but far too short of period to be of interest. Why? Variability. Dominated by El Nino/La Nina.

Some other obscure place? Who cares.

Where the vast majority of climate's heat is, yes, is warming, and no evidence to the contrary.

Heat content of the climate system is mostly in the oceans.

 

[RegGuheert]

No warming, where?

Your back yard? Who cares...

3km high in the atmosphere (MSU temperatures)? Sure, no warming there, but far too short of period to be of interest. Why? Variability. Dominated by El Nino/La Nina.

Some other obscure place? Who cares.

Where the vast majority of climate's heat is, yes, is warming, and no evidence to the contrary.

Heat content of the climate system is mostly in the oceans.

More rhetoric with no data.

Here's the data:

So, no, there is NOT heat going into all the oceans. Only the Indian Ocean and the South Atlantic show an increase in heat content. Somehow, the CO2 forgot to warm the *entire* Pacific Ocean and the *entire* North Atlantic Ocean.

 

[klapauzius]

:shrug:

You've done that several times in this thread - asked for an example of what I am saying, and then only to tell me that it's not relevant.

.. So why ask? ...

Donald, when I was asking about an example, I obviously had something in mind that demonstrates how a whole field of science, e.g. like the thousands of climate scientists , would behave wrong.

What you have done is taking one single element of a group and generalized to the whole group.
It takes a certain mindset to do this and not see the error of it.

But since you are eager to learn, here is an example:

Someone says "BBC is full of perverts",
then someone else asks
"could you provide an example"
and the answer is
"sure, Jimmy Savile was a pervert".

 

[WetEV]

I've said this before: You cannot use four-year-old data to show the slope of temperature today. And grouping data by decade gives no information about slope during the decade.

So? Decade and shorter time periods are not interesting. See the climate escalator.

The total heat content of the climate system is still increasing. I know, I should go look for pretty pictures. But here is just the numbers.

http://data.nodc.noaa.gov/woa/DATA_ANALYSIS/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/DATA/basin/yearly/h22-w0-700m.dat" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://data.nodc.noaa.gov/woa/DATA_ANALYSIS/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/DATA/basin/3month/ohc2000m_levitus_climdash_seasonal.csv" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

 

[klapauzius]

Perhaps you are not aware of the history of science? The consensus view has virtually always been proven incorrect by later scientific discoveries. And those who develop the dissenting views do so by following the facts rather than the crowd. And they are typically scorned and ridiculed mercilessly by the consensus scientists. IMO, anyone who believes the consensus view in science is the correct view without confirming it themselves does not understand that consensus is quite the antithesis of science. Science is about the discovery of nature, not about forming a self-admiration society.

Please provide an example.

Bear in mind though that modern science typically is considered to have started in the Renaissance. Therefore, no medieval examples.
Also, please do not use the "flat" world example, as even in Columbus times contemporary science knew already that the world wasnt flat.

I am not aware of any major scientific debate in the past 2 centuries, where this was the case.

The most controversial hypotheses/theories in the 19th century were most likely the deep time hypothesis and the theory of evolution.
Proponents of both were met with disbelief and ridicule, but based on religious beliefs, not science.

 

[Stoaty]

I've said this before: You cannot use four-year-old data to show the slope of temperature today. And grouping data by decade gives no information about slope during the decade.

Reg, I think you are confusing weather with climate. It doesn't matter what the slope is during the decade, only that each decade is on average hotter than the last.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/05/02/1952401/may-2-news-last-12-years-were-among-13-warmest-on-record-world-meteorological-organisation-confirms/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

"2012 was the ninth-warmest year since 1850, and 2001-2012 were all among the top 13 warmest years on record, according to the World Meteorological Organization."

Warmest year on record - 2010:

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2013/13" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

 

[WetEV]

Where the vast majority of climate's heat is, yes, is warming, and no evidence to the contrary.

Heat content of the climate system is mostly in the oceans.

More rhetoric with no data.

So, no, there is NOT heat going into all the oceans. Only the Indian Ocean and the South Atlantic show an increase in heat content. Somehow, the CO2 forgot to warm the *entire* Pacific Ocean and the *entire* North Atlantic Ocean.

So what if there is regional differences, especially on short time periods. Not interesting, as climate models are not reliable on short terms or for regional variability.

http://data.nodc.noaa.gov/woa/DATA_ANALYSIS/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/DATA/basin/yearly/h22-w0-700m.dat" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://data.nodc.noaa.gov/woa/DATA_ANALYSIS/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/DATA/basin/3month/ohc2000m_levitus_climdash_seasonal.csv" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

 

[klapauzius]

But to answer your specific question, climate science is virtually all funded by governments, which at their heart are political, not scientific, organizations.As I have pointed out previously, what we are seeing as a result is in large part is simply Lysenkoism. The UN has become the overarching government organization which is making the effects of this current round of Lysenkoism so far-reaching. Perhaps in the future it will be known as "Hansenism". :lol:

And why would governments (or the UN) have an interest in promoting AGW????
Given the virtually non-response of virtually every government in the world to this problem, they would LOVE to see it disappear.

The US government has for years tried to silence or neutralize outspoken AGW proponents.
Other governments give lip-service to the idea of AGW, but do nothing...and secretly hoping they can get away with it.
Any government in the world would be happy to see this hypothesis proven wrong.

As I have shown from many sources of data, there world is NOT currently warming. You call that a lie, but you cannot support your belief with data.
You can believe that something is black when it is clearly white, but I refuse to accept that view.

There thousands of peer-reviewed scientific studies, published in the most respected journals, that show that the earth has been warming. To say I cannot support my belief with data is either a flat out lie (and a rather dumb one, like you expect from a two year old) or gross disconnect from reality.

 

[RegGuheert]

Please provide an example.

The very best modern example is the discovery of cold fusion by Drs. Fleischman and Pons twenty-five years ago. If you are like I was a few months ago, that sounds like a crazy idea since the consensus is SO far against the idea that this is a real effect. But the simple fact of the matter is that Drs. Fleischman and Pons likely deserve the Nobel Prize in Physics instead of the massive amount of abuse they received. This is a perfect example of the scientific community behaving extremely badly and getting things completely wrong.

Far from being disproven, research into Cold Fusion has gone on around the world for the past quarter-century and much has been learned, in spite of the poor atmosphere in the community. Thousands of papers have been written, with a large number of them confirming excess heat.

If you have not read it before, I highly recommend the book Excess Heat: Why Cold Fusion Research Prevailed by Charles Beaudette. This is an outstanding history of the first decade of Cold Fusion research with a massive amount of documentation to support what is written there. (It is also available at this link for free. That website claims the author has gave permission to distribute it freely before his death. I have no way to verify that.) The author has very little nice to say about "the physicists" in that book, whom he believes behaved extremely badly, but he still manages to write the book without coming up with a conspiracy theory.

60 Minutes did a piece on Cold Fusion about 5 years ago:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTvaX3vRtRA[/youtube]
In that piece, they asked the American Physical Society (IIRC) to recommend a physicist with a background sufficient to properly evaluate a cold-fusion experiment and give a report on what he found. Very interesting!

Finally, it seems there has been some activity around the 25th anniversary this year. First of all, MIT offered a 5-day course back in January on Cold Fusion hosted by a professor at MIT (surprisingly, a physicist who was there back in 1989, BTW) and a researcher from industry working in that area. It covers a broad range of information including history (good and bad), theoretical problems with cold fusion and commercialization work. These are very technical and fairly long, but there is a wealth of information. 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.

Finally, MIT hosted a colloquium on Cold Fusion in March around the anniversary date. Those videos can be found on the ColdFusionNow YouTube Channel.

And, yes, I believe that Cold Fusion rather than hot fusion or Thorium-based reactors will be the long-term solution to base load on this planet.

 

[klapauzius]

Please provide an example.

The very best modern example is the discovery of cold fusion by Drs. Fleischman and Pons twenty-five years ago.
...
And, yes, I believe that Cold Fusion rather than hot fusion or Thorium-based reactors will be the long-term solution to base load on this planet.

As far as I recall, cold fusion would not contradict 'hot' or 'conventional' fusion. So where is the controversy?

The only debate here was about whether an industrial application eventually can be developed or not. The discussion probably got a little bit hot as the initial claims seemed to indicate that you dont need a billion dollar machine to make fusion energy.

In any case, cold fusion wasnt overthrowing a fundamental scientific observation, as nobody was claiming that fusion could only happen in 100 million degree hot plasma.

 

[Nubo]

 

[RegGuheert]

As far as I recall, cold fusion would not contradict 'hot' or 'conventional' fusion. So where is the controversy?

A big part of it has to do with theory. The theory at the time, and continuing today, does not accommodate what is observed in the experiments. This issue is covered pretty early on in the MIT lectures.

The only debate here was about whether an industrial application eventually can be developed or not. The discussion probably got a little bit hot as the initial claims seemed to indicate that you dont need a billion dollar machine to make fusion energy.

That's a big part of it. The hot-fusion physicists called it "kitchen chemistry". But the fact is that while cold-fusion experiments have shown excess heat for decades, none of the hot-fusion power experiments have accomplished that feat (outside of bombs and accelerators).

In any case, cold fusion wasnt overthrowing a fundamental scientific observation, as nobody was claiming that fusion could only happen in 100 million degree hot plasma.

Actually, that's exactly what was going on. Simply put, the hot-fusion physicists insisted that if the Fleischman and Pons' experiment had released the amount of heat that it did, they would be dead. The theory still cannot explain it. (There are several theories out there, but none are clearly explaining what is going on.)

The cold fusion episode is extremely parallel. The difference is that cold-fusion science can be done in the lab, meaning there is a way to resolve the fuss. That's not so easy to do with the climate...

 

[klapauzius]

Not really interested in a discussion of cold fusion (we could make a separate thread, but it wont lead anywhere). Its no parallel to AGW denial, simply because it doesn't contradict anything.

Do you want to give another example?